Losing and Leaving, Risking and Receiving

In Jesus’s promise that his disciples would inherit a family beyond their imagining was a material reward — now in this present time — responding to the concrete things Peter reminded him they had given up. Family was one’s safety net. But note the one relative not mentioned — fathers — because we all have one Father who gives us all those relatives we didn’t know we had until they were revealed to us. But risk comes before reward. The risk in this case was family members who would refuse to accept Jesus, and all those new relatives that those of one’s blood might not want. And two millennia later, it isn’t just blood that can become an excuse to keep others out or at the margins.

In our Gospel today the resistance to Jesus’ invitation to risk has two fronts, the rich man’s and Peter’s. The rich man gives lip service to the truth that eternal life is something we inherit as a gift. But having done so much to gain his wealth, he still thinks he must “do” something to earn it. At least he’s not so complacent that he doesn’t understand that up to this point he hasn’t done enough. But that spiritual insecurity makes him hoard what he already has. He doesn’t understand that his risk-free existence is what stands between him and the eternal reward he at least knows he still lacks.

Peter and his fellow middle-class disciples have never been as wealthy as the rich man. But with small businesses like fishing, they’ve had just enough wealth to know how quickly they could still lose it all. They’re still grasping for power as we saw a few Sundays ago. They can’t do as much as the rich man to ease their insecurity but maybe they can flatter their way or backstab their way to their reward.

How does Jesus respond to all these anxieties? “Amen I say to you, there is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive now in this present time a hundred times as much, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land – and persecutions too – and, in the age to come, eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30). Note that Jesus says, “left,” not “lost.” Sermons are not autobiographies. But on this my first Sunday as your Rector, and to quote the Indigo Girls, I want to tell you something ‘bout my life, maybe give me insight between black and white. And with the change of “left” to “lost,” my life and this gospel come together.

Technically, my brother, Robert Jr., died at 4am on September 30th, 2015. But I will always associate his passing with the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels on the 29th. He was only four years older than me, but decades of drug abuse eventually took their toll. My father, Robert Sr., died on December 11th, 2000, only 71, but when you smoke for nearly 50 years, that will do it. He was buried next to my mother, Bobbye, at the Mt. Moriah Baptist Church outside of Sylacauga, Alabama. On July 10th, 1978, at the Grand Canyon, she lost her balance and fell. I was seventeen. During my college years, I was like Lt. Dan in Forest Gump, or Jacob wresting with God. To paraphrase an old country hymn, I’ve got a mother, a father, and a brother, who have gone to that sweet home. And I’m determined to go and see them Good Lord, over on, Good Lordy, over on that other shore.

But from God I have received now, in this present time, a wife and her family, a son, a daughter-in-law and her family. And God has given me mothers and siblings galore in this family called the Church, The Episcopal Church to be precise. But to let that loss become something I could receive required me to leave my pretensions of thinking my way to the truth in the solitude of my own mind. The rich man was asked to leave behind his possessions. I had to leave behind my intellectual pride. But since then, I have not been alone.

In this Episcopal Church I have met Jesus, the Word who was with God and is God, who has nourished me with his teaching and with his very self in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. In this Episcopal Church, I have met a family beyond my imagining. And on this first day, I am so glad to meet the newest members of my family.